Metro 2033 is a post apocalyptic FPS horror based in the nuclear ruins of Moscow, Russia. You play as Artyom, a citizen of metro station Exhibition. You awaken to your father speaking to you, concerned of the well being of Exhibition after recent attacks from an unknown horror, leaving the station in a state or terror and despair. You walk with your father, through the crowded corridors of the station, listening to conversations between wives and war torn soldiers. You look at children playing and drawing along the walls, hearing the faint song playing from a guitar in the distance. You feel a sense of peace, just to be shaken back to reality by the alert of another attack.

This is, the reality deep within the Metro of post apocalyptic Moscow. Families trying to survive desperate times and soldiers trying to survive mutants. Around every corner are unknown dangers waiting to strike.
It is the morning when your friend enters your small room to get you ready for the caravan delivery you will be embarking on. It is the first time you've left the safety of your home station, but are assured it will be a safe and a short trip between here and a neighboring station, you have other plans to journey to Polis station however. You ride the caravan with your friends feeling calm when you're told by workers the main tunnel is closed off, and that you will have to use an alternative access tunnel. This is where things take a turn for the worse.

You will have to fight, sneak and survive your way through the metro on your odyssey to Polis station. Every table is turned against you willing for your failure, whether that be bandits, hostile soldiers or horrifying creatures, mutated from living and breathing the nuclear radiation on the surface above, in the dead city of Moscow. Few allies are made but you rely on them with your live and vice versa. In the metro a man is his word so be careful who you trust.

The gameplay graphics are in a word, great. Shadows are strong as is the darkness and the overall atmosphere is intense. As I travel outside in the ruins of the city I appreciate the lighting and the reflections.
Snow and ice have a more traditional life like look about them over being overly bright. The many buildings are fairly detailed and as we go down into the metro tunnels I can see light sources and lighting reflections are top notch. The game uses a wonderful stealth system, though it can be buggy at times.

Hostile soldiers will be alerted to excessive sound and from seeing you crawl around the metro in dimly lit areas. In the game you wear a watch that acts as both a gasmask timer alarming you to replace your gasmask filters, as well as a light indicator telling you how visible you are in lit areas. The less light shining on you the more stealthy you are.

The game controls are relatively easy to use. Among standard shooter game controls we see a few extra controls required for game specific items like your universal charger, that keeps your flash light and night vision goggles charged if you have them, and along with controls for fitting your gasmask and replacing filters. We have controls for swapping out ammunition in assault rifles from regular low quality metro made bullets to premium prewar military ammunition. Be careful using prewar ammo as it also serves as currency within the metro.

The game is honestly poorly optimized, as at highest settings and anything above 1080p you'll need some serious central processing and graphics processing power. Using a 3570k paired with a r9 280x and 8gb of system memory, I can run high settings at 1080p in direct X 10 and achieve more than acceptable frame rates however. Setting to direct X 11 is where things get tough, along with other settings like anti aliasing and PhysX for those of you with Nvidia graphics.

Overall Metro 2033 is an amazingly fresh horror first person shooter. It offers a wonderful atmosphere to experience with some tough challenges, especially at higher difficulty settings.
If you like games similar to whats been described I'd give Metro 2033 a look for sure.

I for one wish there were more PC games with such high hardware requirements, so that is a massive plus. It's about time developers started making games that take advantage of powerful hardware, instead of making console ports that look the same whether you play it on a new PC or one from 4 years ago.